


our separate unsteady ways

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:57:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Rae and Finn burn for each other but their fire blinds everyone around them - especially their satellites. She’s a frozen moon, dark and lifeless, in orbit around the bright light of Rae’s sun.</i> There's nothing warm in the way she burns - a snippet of how Chloe learns what she needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our separate unsteady ways

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the poem [ Voronezh](http://winterdance.weebly.com/winter-related-poems.html) by Anna Akhmatova. Thanks to Lu for reminding me to take my OT3 feels to their own story and to Bethany for telling me to pick a theme and run with it. ILU BBs.

Eventually she grows up. College ends and she flees to brighter lights. No matter how many stars you can see in a small town sky, Chloe knows you’ll never reach them if you stay.

 

Not everyone understands why she won’t stay. (Can’t stay, she insists every time the topic comes up and it comes up often. She knows they don’t hear her.) Waving good-bye to her best mates is agony, as painful as any blow she’s ever taken. Walking away from them means not having anyone to hold onto when she stumbles. She feels clumsier every day.

 

Leaving also means stepping out of the shadows. Rae and Finn burn for each other but their fire blinds everyone around them - especially their satellites. She’s a frozen moon, dark and lifeless, in orbit around the bright light of Rae’s sun. Maybe she prefers the dark or maybe she needs to learn to cast her own light.

 

There’s freedom in walking away - running, if she’s honest. Keeping warm all on her own is hard, harder than Rae makes it out to be.

 

She tries sparking that fire in so many different ways. Mostly she ends up even colder than she was before. Men, she learns, are afraid of her - the rough touches to her soft skin are a distraction, a way to hide the tremors in their hand. Their terror is a cover for her own and when she talks now, she wields her words like a whip and strips the skin from their backs as they lie helpless underneath her.

 

After, she’ll think of Finn and wonder if he was scared too. Is that what it was about her he didn’t like? Was it how hard it is for her to shine, the way she only reflects light and can’t seem to create it?  Or was she lacking somehow in comparison with Rae?

 

Nights like that send her back out looking for a connection to someone, anyone - no matter how fleeting. Skin on skin pushes the endless questions away for awhile and that’s better than nothing. Trying to strike a spark isn’t working - she doesn’t run hot.

 

Eventually she goes back. The bright lights blind her as much as the sunshine ever did. She hasn’t seen any stars worth reaching for that aren’t already in her backyard. There are plenty of arms to pull her in and she’s whole for minutes at a time under their warm embrace. Rae’s smile when they’re together helps to thaw the ice that’s grown thick round her heart but reflected sunshine is too much and not enough. She’ll never be all the way together, not like she used to be.

 

Walking back to her parent’s house from the chippy, thick flakes of snow fall lightly all around her. She turns back to watch Rae and Finn hurry off together, Finn’s arm wrapped tight around Rae. He chose Rae, she thinks, because Finn is a boy of summers - all lazy heat and soft noise. He's not got it in him to handle a strong freeze.

  
She is always winter. The chill inside her was never going to catch light from his radiant heat - she needs someone with a taste for the cold. There is nothing warm in the way she burns. 


End file.
